


Exhaustion

by sheafrotherdon



Series: Exhaustion [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Heartache, M/M, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Protective Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Protective Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26127331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: Adrenaline keeps Joe vigilant as Andy navigates them away from Merrick Pharmaceuticals.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Exhaustion [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912660
Comments: 56
Kudos: 700





	Exhaustion

Adrenaline keeps Joe vigilant as Andy navigates them away from Merrick Pharmaceuticals. No one’s looking for their car, but they’re dirty, disheveled, and blood stained, and any right-thinking person would have questions if they gave them a second glance. Andy drives with efficiency and purpose, and Joe resolutely does not think about her gunshot wound. Instead he reaches his right hand back toward Nicky, and Nicky takes it in both of his, rubs his thumb across Joe’s wrist in a gesture of comfort that’s almost more than Joe can take. He bounces his knee, looks out the passenger window of the car, and adds Booker to the list of things for which he will not spare a thought.

They drop Booker at Copley’s place but keep the car. Andy refuses Nicky’s offer to check her wound and Joe’s offer to drive, and since Joe has no fucking clue where they are, the latter’s probably for the best. With Booker gone, Nicky and Nile take one side of the back seat each, and quickly fall asleep as Andy drives them north. Joe glances back to check on both of them, sees Nile with her head tipped back, and Nicky with his face pressed to the window. They both look younger than they are, somehow, and Joe feels a knot in his throat, turns back to look at the road, and bounces his knee again until Andy reaches out to still it.

“Tell me what happened in the lab,” she says. 

Joe scrubs his hands across his face and sighs. “You can imagine.”

“I need to know,” Andy insists.

Joe nods; he’d feel the same way. “She took blood to begin with. Vials of it.” He laughs bitterly. “You know I had a moment of thinking that might be all she wanted?” 

“And then?”

“And then skin. And then muscle. And then bone.”

“Bone?”

Joe feels his guts clench at the memory of the bone-marrow biopsy needle, and he rubs a hand absently across his side. “Yeah.”

They drive silently for a couple of minutes before Andy asks, “Did you die?”

“I did.”

“Did Nicky?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Goddamn it,” Andy says unhappily, smacking the steering wheel with her open palm. She sets her jaw and Joe can see her pulling everything back under control. “It’s an hour until we’ll get there. You should sleep.”

Joe agrees, he should. The adrenaline’s wearing off, and his thinking’s only going to get muddier, his temper short. But he remembers too clearly coming back to life and seeing Nicky strapped to the table beside him, pale despite his calm demeanor, and Kozak walking away with a fresh specimen bottle in her hand. He remembers that he made Nicky laugh, that they talked about Malta, and it eats at him—that whatever he’d missed while Kozak was experimenting, Nicky had been in pain enough that he’d had to escape in his mind while his body was being broken down into tiny constituent parts. “We should’ve killed her,” he says at last.

“Yeah,” Andy agrees. She pauses, then: “We still can.”

It’s dusk when Andy pulls the car as far off the road as she can manage, in front of an isolated house with one lamp lit. 

“You made arrangements,” said Joe.

“Always do,” Andy says simply, and opens her door, gets out of the car.

Nile stirs behind Joe, groans as she sits up. “We here?”

“We are.” Joe shifts to see her better.

“Should I wake Nicky?”

Joe shakes his head. “I got him.”

Nile closes the door with a gentleness that somehow makes Joe’s heart hurt.

It’s just he and Nicky, and Joe studies Nicky’s face while he’s still asleep. There are deep shadows beneath his eyes, blood on his face, and his jeans are covered in dust, yet Joe’s heart beats two rapid beats, skips, and beats again looking at him. He’s furious, somewhere deep inside that he can’t yet access, that he’s too tired to go looking for—furious at Booker, at Copley, at himself for not seeing what he couldn’t have begun to imagine. He lets out a breath and reaches to curve a hand around Nicky’s knee. “Habibi, we’re here,” he murmurs.

Nicky frowns and mumbles something so quietly Joe can’t hear it. 

“There is a bed inside, you will be so much more comfortable there.”

Nicky blinks and half opens his eyes, looks at Joe mournfully for a second, then yawns and covers Joe’s hand with his own. “You’re right,” he says. “How long did I sleep?”

Joe realizes he has no idea how much time passed on the drive, and dusk is no help to him – he forgets what time the sun sets here in summer, so he shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Did you sleep?”

“No.”

Nicky nods thoughtfully, then reaches to open the door. “We can both use that bed,” he says, climbing out.

There’s food in the kitchen, and Nile’s busy trying to find a news station on the radio, and Nicky straight up refuses to let Andy continue to pretend she isn’t hurt. But Joe can’t focus, can’t handle the noise, the bright kitchen lights, the activity, and mumbles something about a shower and heads right upstairs. There are bedrooms enough for everyone, so he takes the one that’s closest to the stairs, sits on the bed and stares at the pattern on the rug. He’s exhausted. There’s not one more ounce of energy or clear headedness in him. He pulls off his shirt and wads it up in his hands, but doesn’t do more. He’s still sitting, stock still, when Nicky joins him. 

“Are you okay?” Nicky asks, and Joe would laugh, but the question’s meant sincerely, and his throat is tight.

“No,” he says after a moment’s pause, and Nicky crosses the room to stand in front of him. Joe leans into him, his forehead against Nicky’s stomach, and lets Nicky run his fingers through his hair. He’s tired, so fucking tired, tired of thinking, tired of wondering why Booker would _ever_ , tired of being awake, tired of everything but this. “I want everything to stop.”

Nicky hums his understanding, cups the back of Joe’s neck with one hand. “Can you shower?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Joe says, but doesn’t move, and Nicky laughs softly, gets a hand beneath Joe’s elbow and hauls him up. He herds Joe toward the bathroom, sets the water running, strips himself with efficiency and Joe too. 

“Come here,” he says, stepping into the tub, pulling at Joe’s hand, and Joe goes, and Nicky kisses him as he backs him under the spray. Joe doesn’t know how to name the sound he makes at Nicky’s touch—a grumble; a keening—but he lets himself be manhandled, Nicky washing the blood from both their bodies, the dust and matter from their hair, and he dries himself off once Nicky’s done in the most desultory manner possible, heads right for the bed.

Nicky follows, turning off lights and closing the bedroom door. He climbs in beside Joe and urges him onto his side, curls up behind him with his knees tucked close, and pulls him in. “My Yusuf,” he whispers into the back of Joe’s neck.

Joe stares at the wall across from the bed and tries to releax. “How could he do it?” he asks at last.

“Booker?”

“How.” Joe closes his eyes and turns his face into the pillow. “Just fucking . . . . how.”

Nicky presses his lips to the nape of Joe’s neck, doesn’t pull back for several long, quiet moments. “I think,” he says at last, “that we should wait until morning to figure that out.”

Joe shifts in his arms until they’re facing one another, until he can reach to cup Nicky’s jaw and kiss him slowly, sweetly, with every ounce of feeling he has. When they part, they’re both breathing hard, and Nicky covers Joe’s hand with his own. 

“My beloved, they did not win,” he says simply.

Joe lets out a breath. “No.” There’s that at least. They’re alive and tangled together and tomorrow they can look at the broken pieces they’re clutching in their hands and figure out how to put things back into some semblance of a whole. Nicky shifts onto his back, pulls Joe close against his side, and Joe feels himself sinking despite himself, lulled by the warmth of Nicky’s body.

“I’m so tired,” he mumbles, eyes closed.

“Me too,” Nicky says, and Joe feels the brush of Nicky’s lips against his forehead before he drifts.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [[this post]](https://joeandnicky.tumblr.com/post/627462604547293184)


End file.
